thoughtbot

Shortbord

Shortbord is probably the best way to advertise on the web. Social media users ("surfers") sign endorsement deals with companies ("sponsors") to display the company's logo next to the surfer's avatar on social media sites ("partners").

thoughtbot worked with the three founders of Shortbord to design and build a Rails app from scratch. As part of our Kickstart program, the founders work out of our Boston office and we help them find and train technical hires.

Umbrella Today

The Umbrella Today application is the simplest weather report a person could possibly want. We were frustrated with the constant information overload provided by web and television-based weather reporting services, so we attempted to build a service that answered the one question anyone really cares about - "do I need to bring an umbrella?" The Umbrella Today application was conceived, designed, developed and continues to be maintained entirely by thoughtbot.

Carbon Rally

Carbonrally offers individuals and groups a fun, simple and social way to have an impact on energy consumption and climate change. The site uses a contest-based approach to encouraging groups of people to reduce their collective carbon output. We are responsible for the design and backend implementation of this application.

BuyWithMe

Buy With Me is a web application which allows groups of people to participate in "group buying " deals from selected vendors – based on a minimal threshold of participants joining the deal. We did the UI design and backend development for this project.

Nature Network

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) publishes Nature — the leading scientific journal for academic and industry scientists and researchers. When NPG wanted to expand their online presence and brand into the world of social networking, they called on thoughtbot to create a companion service to their flagship product at nature.com – and Nature Network was born. The site aims to capture the passion and interest of their science audience while including general news, forum, blog and group content, and aims to be a leading meeting place for "science 2.0". We have also done work on Nature Precedings and Naturejobs – other web properties operated by NPG.

The Editor at Large

The Editor at Large offers a fruitful, low-maintenance way to get new product in front of an audience of editors who are searching for high-quality design content. We were approached with an idea and with a design, and asked to implement the backend functionality of the site — which launched on time and on budget.